Time Cannot Erase
by domina tempore
Summary: Twenty-eight years. One would think that she'd lose track after all of that time; but sometimes it was easier to be crazy and remember everything than to be what passed for "sane" here and have to fight for every memory, every scrap of self. Tag to "Skin Deep".


**Once Upon a Time:** _Time Cannot Erase_

_Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and all of its characters, locations, etc. belong to their respective owners: I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended!_

_Author's Note: So this a bit of my head-canon of how Belle's time in Storybrooke went. I'm actually quite proud of this piece, which doesn't generally happen with me, haha. It's also the only piece of fanfiction that I've ever willingly shared/read out loud to anyone (not that they knew it was fanfiction, but whatever). It's...very special to me. Hope you all enjoy! Cheers! _

_Special thanks to my ever-amazing beta, the lovely IuvenesCor on AO3. Could not do this without you, dearie! _

**ovo**

_Twenty-eight years._ _Twenty-eight years, two months, three days, four hours, twelve minutes, and thirty-six seconds_. That was how long she'd been locked up here in this tiny, filthy room. One would think that she'd lose track after all of that time; but sometimes it was easier to be crazy and remember everything than to be what passed for "sane" here and have to fight for every memory, every scrap of self. Because these four walls, this hard cot and barred window, they were _not_ real. They couldn't be.

_Ten feet_. That was the length of her cell, from wall to wall. Seven feet from door to window, and another ten from floor to roof. _One million, two hundred and nine thousand, six hundred inches all together_. Maybe she had gone mad, counting minutes and inches and every tear she cried since she'd come to this place (_three thousand seventy-three_). It certainly didn't make sense, why she was storing all of these numbers up; she didn't remember such things mattering before. But what was before?

She had memories, vague and hazy, of being locked away; snippets of captivity and darkened faces and strange places. There were some memories that didn't make sense, like palaces and tea time (since when had she ever had a tea party?) and heavy, huge draperies. Flapping coattails, a wild laugh, and a spinning wheel filled in to complete an impossible dream in which straw and roses were precious and men had no faces.

She wondered sometimes if that was where she belonged instead of here. If maybe she had been misplaced from her world, and that the dreams and "delusions" that she was told had made her crazy were really the most real things that she had, trying to draw her home. But each time that thought started to get comfortable, she was reminded in no uncertain terms by that dark woman who peeked in on her, or he harsh reality of this awful place, or even her inability to see even her own face in those dreams, let alone others, that this was all that was real, and her dreams were exactly that. A story, charming to recount but utterly impossible.

_Ten thousand, two hundred ninety-one_. The number of days that she had spent in this cell. In spite of reality, that was the one thing that kept her dreaming. She might have been mad, but she wasn't stupid; people aged. Twenty-eight years was a long time, even more so when broken down into hours and minutes. Enough time for people to grow old. And yet the woman who brought her food, the other woman who came to check that she was still there, they hadn't aged a day. Her own hands looked no older that they had when she had entered this place. Was it possible to be trapped in time, to exist but not to age?

It was this question that kept her going, reminded her not to roll over and give in when the rest of her tiny world demanded that she accept her fate. Because this couldn't be all that there was. There had to be a world outside of her prison. The man in her dreams _must_ have a face.

_Two thousand, three-hundred eight-one_. That was the number of dreams she'd had where someone had called her by name, which had never happened here. That was the reality she fought to hold onto.

_Belle fought._

_fin._

_A/N: Okay, so I suck at math. I spent hours trying to work out the logistics of time and space and all that, but I'm not entirely positive if I got it right. Don't hold it against me, please?_


End file.
